


Long Live the Weeds

by idiopathicsmile



Category: Tanis (Podcast)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-02
Updated: 2016-06-02
Packaged: 2018-07-11 17:58:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7064044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idiopathicsmile/pseuds/idiopathicsmile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nic Silver loses at air hockey, throws himself into an ill-conceived hookup, pets a cute dog, and <i>maybe just maybe just maybe</i> finally starts to pick up on some subtext.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Long Live the Weeds

**Author's Note:**

> Written to the same prompt as [galacticdrift](http://galacticdrift.tumblr.com/)’s [just a room full of my safest sounds](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6641203) so you should definitely read that one too if you haven’t yet. Two different fics featuring an adorable dog may seem like overkill NOW but I predict we will be glad in the coming months for whatever fluff we have stockpiled.
> 
> Also this is a continuation to my earlier ficlet, [Gotta Move On](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6486715), but you can pretty much follow along without it.
> 
> Many thanks to [passiveaggressivegummybear](passiveaggressivegummybear.tumblr.com): beta, makeout consultant/choreographer, and True American Hero.

Sometimes Nic wondered just how much of himself he had irrevocably left behind in the woods of the Pacific Northwest. Sometimes he wondered if there was any way to ever know, to quantify and track the absences, charting out fragments of his own ghost.

But for what it was worth, he had been allowed to retain his Zaxxon skills. He found this more comforting than he probably should’ve, he thought, as he cleared the level that had confounded Geoff for the last twenty minutes.

“Nice,” Geoff said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Gotta teach me your secret someday.” Geoff was a very physical drunk. Not in a bad way, but friendly, tactile—patting Nic on the back a lot, going in for frequent high fives, once pointing out something on the bar menu by placing his palm on the back of Nic’s neck and gently turning his whole head in the right direction.

To be honest, it was pleasant. Grounding. Lately, Nic’s default state had been— “a haze” seemed melodramatic, but there was a vagueness in him from time to time, a floating sensation made all the more unsettling by his utter lack of panic about it. Touch anchored him somewhat, but his family was in Vancouver and things were tense right now with Alex, and adults didn’t go around asking neighbors or baristas or PNWS sound engineers for a hug.

“I grew up a ten-minute bike ride from an arcade,” said Nic, “and I—"  _Spent a lot of time there because I didn’t have any friends for the entire year I turned thirteen,_ he could’ve said, truthfully, but didn’t. He and Geoff had only really hung out a handful of times; there had to be a limit to how much of a sadsack Nic was willing to be in front of him.

Geoff raised his eyebrows, expectant. “Let’s just say I’ve fought a space invader or two, in my time,” Nic finished.

“Well,” said Geoff, giving him an amiable nudge in the ribs, “if the aliens ever do come…”

“And they’re considerate enough to attack us in tiny ships,” Nic agreed. “A half-dozen at a time.”

“With guns that shoot pixels.”

“Yeah,” said Nic. He pictured flurries of glowing squares whizzing through the air. “If that ever comes to pass, I am all set to swoop in and rescue the Milky Way.”

“Sounds good,” Geoff said, throwing an arm around Nic’s shoulders. “So: round of drinks for the hero of the galaxy. And then—game of air hockey or two, gimme a chance to rebuild my ego?”

Geoff’s arm was a comfortable weight, warm. Nic leaned back into it a little. He had to keep reminding himself not to get clingy. Geoff was a friendly guy but Nic had never quite internalized the rules of bro culture and it wasn’t always clear where the lines were. He didn’t want to overstep.

“Yeah,” said Nic. After a second or two, he hazarded an awkward pat on the back. Geoff made a vaguely amused sound but didn’t protest. “Okay.”

 

Nic’s hand shot out a second too late, and the puck flew past. Again. He wasn’t tracking points, which was maybe for the best, but watching the puck zoom straight into the goal, he got a real sense of deja vu.

“What’s the score?” said Nic.

Geoff shook his head, smiling. “Don’t bum yourself out, man.”

“On the other hand,” Nic said, “if the aliens attack us via air hockey, I’m _fucked_.” Geoff grinned at him, and Nic laughed. Possibly the fifth beer had been a mistake. Or possibly it had been the best idea of the night; his whole body was almost buzzing. That was probably why they called it _being buzzed_ , he realized. He made a mental note to verify this later. Fact check. “Sorry,” he said. “Can’t be much of a challenge to you.”

“You’re fine, buddy,” said Geoff. “You’ve got the reflexes, you kicked my ass at Zaxxon. You just need to loosen up your playing.”

“What?” Nic frowned. “How?”

“You’re—“ Geoff huffed. “It’s like trying to explain how to ride a bike. Here.” In a few steps, he’d joined Nic at other side of the table. Their elbows brushed. “See how I’ve got the mallet? You don’t want to grip it at the top.”

Nic bit his lip, scrutinizing Geoff’s hold on the—apparently the little plastic pusher disk was called a mallet. Geoff kept his thumb and pinky on the outside edge, and braced the rest of his fingers behind the knob. In Geoff’s hand it looked effortless, but Geoff had long fingers and square knuckles and the physical assurance of a man who didn’t constantly fidget like his skeleton wanted out of his skin, so. There was a certain home-court advantage.

Nic tried to fold his hand the same way over his own mallet. It made him feel like a clumsy puppeteer. “Doesn’t seem as secure,” he said.

“Doesn’t need to be.” Geoff set down his mallet. “A looser hold keeps you flexible, lets you react quicker.” He moved to stand behind Nic’s right shoulder and placed his fingers over Nic’s, gently pivoting his wrist from side to side, forward, back, diagonal. “See?” said Geoff. “Simple.” He was right: it was a lot faster. “The other thing,” Geoff added, “you’re staying way too close to your goal.”

Helpful as it was, Geoff’s hand on his was distracting somehow. Nic narrowed his eyes, trying to focus.

“I feel like,” Nic said, “if anything, isn’t the problem that I’m not close enough to it? You keep scoring on me.”

“Nah,” said Geoff. He kept his grip light, but Nic could still feel the slight drag of callouses against his skin. “If you hang back, it leaves your corners vulnerable. Best bet is to stay about a foot out.”

“Are you sure?”

“I spent four months on an army base where the only thing in the rec center that never broke down was the air hockey table,” Geoff explained as he guided the mallet forward.

It was almost like working a Ouija board together, Nic thought. Except in this case the guiding spirit was Geoff’s superior knowledge of air hockey. “Where?”

“New Mexico,” said Geoff, and then, with an air of deep mock-sympathy, “White Sands, not Roswell. Sorry, bro.”

Nic had to laugh at that. “Roswell wasn’t aliens. That’s—y’know, people call it the most thoroughly debunked UFO report in history?”

“Just a weather balloon,” Geoff agreed. “Bummer for the conspiracy nuts.”

“No, it was a high-altitude spy balloon,” said Nic. “The Air Force had wired it up with the best microphones of the day. They were trying to capture sound waves from Soviet atom bomb tests. That’s why they lied about it. The conspiracy theorists were—somewhat right, the problem was they were chasing the wrong conspiracy.” Nic must’ve been drunker than he thought. Generally it took another couple of beers before the UFO case studies started to surface.

“Really.”

The way they were standing, Nic couldn’t see Geoff’s face, but he sounded genuinely interested.

“Project Mogul,” Nic told him. “You can—it’s not a wacky theory, the Air Force came clean about it in the nineties.” He could still remember reading the report in high school, like discovering the truth about Santa all over again. That small dose of Cold War espionage and military cover-ups had been the only consolation.

“Huh,” said Geoff, tapping an idle rhythm on Nic’s knuckles.

Nic looked down at their hands on the mallet, wondering why he was so hyper-aware of every point of contact between them. It occurred to him that this was the longest another person had touched him since before Alex’s vacation. The thought filled him with a queasy mixture of embarrassment and frantic gratitude.

Geoff Van Sant, what a guy.

Nic swallowed. “Hey,” he said, giving the mallet a nudge. “So, are we doing this or what?”

“Oh, we’re doing this,” said Geoff.

“Air hockey,” said Nic. “Impart the—impart your secrets. I am ready to learn from the best.”

Geoff took a step closer, which Nic felt more than saw. His breath stirred the hairs at the nape of Nic’s neck. “See, this far from the goal, you feel more exposed, but now, if a shot comes from straight on, you can defend just moving your wrist.” He flicked the mallet back and forth in small, precise movements.

“Doesn’t take much,” Nic observed, mostly to say something. The dizziness he could blame on drinking. He couldn’t say the same for the way his skin was tingling. Alcohol was not famous for heightening the senses.

“Nope,” said Geoff. “And if it’s a bank shot, you’re ready for it,” he added, swinging left in a wide arc. “Yeah?” The motion brought his arm flush with Nic’s from shoulder to fingertips. They were standing almost back to chest now, tucked together; Nic could feel the body heat through his shirt.

“Yeah, okay, yeah.” Nic shivered, which didn’t really make sense because this was the warmest he’d felt in—literally in days. It was better than the beer. Laughter bubbled up in his chest before he was fully aware of it. “Oh my god,” said Nic, “are you—are you doing the thing?”

“What thing?” said Geoff.

“The—the thing,” Nic babbled. He would’ve gestured but his hand was still under Geoff’s. “The thing, from movies, _‘Oh help, I don’t have this skill,’ ‘Well here, let me scoot up behind you and teach you with my body.’_ The—” He laughed again, lightheaded. “Are you doing the thing?”

Geoff hummed, skating their mallet in a small figure eight. “You’re the reporter, Nic Silver,” he said at last, quietly. “You tell me.”

But thinking about work unstuck something from Nic’s memory, something that had seemed very important a few hours ago. “Hey,” he said, “you’re still up for confronting those people who’ve been following you, right?”

Instead of answering, Geoff freed his hand and stepped to the side. “Y’know, man, usually ‘take a night off’ doesn’t mean ‘wait until a minute past twelve and—‘“

Outside the little pocket of warmth Nic had been standing in, the bar was a full five degrees colder. He shivered again. “No,” said Nic, “But it’s—shit, is it past midnight?” He fumbled for his phone and squinted down at the screen. “Whoa, how is it _one forty-seven?_ ”

“Time flies.”

“You’re staying with friends this weekend, right?”

“Yeah,” said Geoff, leaning against the air hockey table and crossing his arms. “It’s not a problem, I told ‘em they didn’t have to worry about waiting up.”

Nic nodded. “Then I think you should probably come home with me tonight,” he said, unlocking his screen on the second try and opening Uber.

It wasn’t like he didn’t have the space. In theory, Amalia was still staying with him, but he’d found a note on Thursday morning saying she wouldn’t be back until Monday or Tuesday—which itself was their most significant interaction in days. If their relationship had ever been serious or committed enough to require a breakup, they would’ve broken up that first night she came to stay with him. He wasn’t sure why she’d left a note in the first place.

It was nobody’s fault. People changed.

When he looked up, Geoff was watching him carefully. Nic wondered what he’d said wrong. “Uh, if you’re okay with—“

“Sure,” said Geoff, with such bewildering enthusiasm that Nic lost his train of thought again.

“Because we’d need to meet up tomorrow anyway,” Nic continued doggedly, “the earlier the better, and rather than going across town first thing in the morning—”

“Not a problem,” said Geoff.

“It’s just, you know, it’s pretty late already, and with Sunday morning traffic, that drive can get nasty, so—“

“We’re good,” said Geoff.

“Anyway, whoever’s following you could be doing it right now, like it’s probably better not to be out there alone if you don’t need to—“

“I said yes three times,” Geoff punched him lightly on the bicep. “Now you’re just fishing for it.”

Nic hit “Accept fare” and rubbed his eyes. “Sorry.”

“Aw, don’t be, it’s cool,” said Geoff. “Wanna wait outside?”

 

The temperature had dropped since their walk over to the bar, because that’s what weather did at night and Nic should’ve seen this coming. He shifted from one foot to the other and rubbed at his arms.

“We can go back in,” said Geoff.

“No, it’s alright,” said Nic, “the car’s supposed to show up any second.”

“Here.” Geoff shucked off his coat, and Nic forced back a verging-on-hysterical laugh.

“Your jacket?”

“I’ll be fine,” said Geoff, shrugging, “I run pretty hot.” Geoff Van Sant was not particularly tall or broad but there was a wiry strength in his forearms, the span of his shoulders. A strength that at this point Nic had not just seen but felt.

“Yeah, you do,” said Nic. It wasn’t until Geoff raised his eyebrows that Nic realized that he’d spoken out loud. He stood by it, though. Factually accurate.

Geoff pressed the jacket into his hands, and Nic slipped it on. The faint scent of what might’ve been aftershave clung to it, nothing like the rotting sickly sweet odor that had been dogging him for weeks. It smelled clean. Wearing it felt like crawling into bed at the end of a long day.

“Better?” Geoff’s mouth quirked, wry.

Nic opened his eyes and smiled back at him to acknowledge the full ridiculousness of the moment: just two dudes out for a beer, accidentally re-enacting fifties dating cliches.

“Thanks, man,” said Nic, propping himself against the wall for the extra structural support. Some of his earlier loopiness had worn off but he was not exactly steady on his feet.

Geoff shook his head. “No trouble.” He frowned. “The neck’s a little twisted, though—”

Nic pawed blindly at it, laughing. “I can’t tell where to—”

“In the back,” said Geoff. “Here, lemme just—” He reached up with both hands. From this close, Geoff’s eyes had a certain brightness that suggested he, too, was drunker than planned. The collar seemed to be taking some effort, which Nic found obscurely comforting.

“Got it,” Geoff said at last, but his hands lingered for a second behind Nic’s neck.

_Don’t push your luck,_ Nic reminded himself. _Don’t ask for a hug._

Geoff’s forehead wrinkled. “You okay, buddy?” he asked, concerned, warm.

Nic leaned forward and kissed him.

He couldn’t explain it, even in his own head. There was no way to dissect the chemical equation of loneliness, restlessness, alcohol, and unchecked impulse that had sent him over that line. Kissing a man. Kissing Geoff.

_What the fuck,_ Nic thought. He pulled away to apologize or try to turn it into a joke or maybe create a distraction that would buy him enough time to flee into the night.

Geoff looked back at him with wide eyes. “So,” Geoff said, “that—”

“Oh my god,” Nic stammered. “I’m _so sorry_. I—”

“It’s okay.” Geoff didn’t seem angry, but his voice sounded a bit rough.

Shit, Nic was still _wearing his jacket,_ what a mess. “I know this isn’t—I mean, clearly it’s not actually a _date_ , or anything,” Nic said in a rush. He tried to make himself laugh. It didn’t work so well. “I just—”

Geoff blinked, shook his head. “No,” he said quietly. “I—yeah.”

“I don’t,” said Nic. The fact that Geoff was being so cool about it made the line-crossing feel a thousand times worse. Nic scrubbed a hand through his hair, looked down at the pavement, wretched. “I mean, god, _fuck_ , sorry. You’ve been so great this whole night, and—I feel like such an asshole.”

“Again,” said Geoff, “it’s okay. You’ve been through some shit, you know?” This time, Nic really did laugh. It came out only a trace unhinged. A corner of Geoff’s mouth tilted up in acknowledgement, a muted half-smile. “Nobody’s expecting you to jump up and be at a hundred percent right off the bat.” Geoff gave Nic’s shoulders a quick squeeze. Apparently, he was still comfortable touching Nic, which was a relief. To an honestly astounding degree.

“Nobody is asking you for that,” Geoff said, slow, deliberate.

For someone so unflappable, Geoff’s direct gaze could be a lot to deal with. Nic met his eyes anyway, wondering at the weight of this moment, and then remembering— _tour in Afghanistan_ —that Geoff had been through some shit, too. Probably Geoff had never responded to the pressures of wartime by trying to make out with his platonic drinking buddy, but he might’ve had a point all the same.

“Well, thanks for being so understanding,” said Nic with feeling. “Really. You’re a good guy, Geoff.”

“Eh,” said Geoff, toying with the zipper of the jacket. “I’m alright.” There was a strange note to the words that Nic couldn’t place. Tired, maybe. Or: amused but also very sad. For no reason Nic could pinpoint, it gave him a creeping sense that he was missing something important.

Nic’s default, ever since getting back from the woods, was to shut out creeping senses of any persuasion. He shifted from one foot to the other. Geoff’s remarkable good grace aside, the ride back home was bound to be awkward. Nic didn’t need to complicate things worse by inventing nuances out of thin air and exhaustion and one beer too many.

“Are you, though,” Nic said anyway. “Are you alright? You seem, I don’t know—”

“Yeah.” Geoff gave another wry half-smile that somehow didn’t quite make it up to his eyes. “Just promise me one thing, bud?”

“Of course,” Nic said.

“That you’re done with the part of the night where you keep saying sorry.”

“But I _am—_ ” Nic cut himself off. If Geoff was truly okay with it, Nic could appreciate how the repetition might get annoying. He started to apologize for that, realized it was the same problem, and sighed. “Just—if I’ve made everything weird, we can always ask the driver to add another stop. You don’t have to come back with—”

“Nic,” said Geoff. “Christ, man. You didn’t make anything weird. Nobody’s being an asshole. It is what it is, and I can deal with it. Okay?”

“Okay,” said Nic. He nodded. “Okay,” he said, redundantly.

“So, we’re on the same page, then?” Geoff licked his lips, out of nervousness, probably. Nic’s eyes tracked the motion without really trying to.

“Yep,” said Nic, and then he didn’t say anything else because Geoff was reeling him in by two fistfuls of jacket and kissing him.

Nic kissed back on instinct, because he was too surprised to do anything else and because Geoff’s mouth was hot and Geoff’s fingers were tangled in Nic’s hair and honestly it felt incredible. Even the stubble scraping against Nic’s face—which could’ve given him pause—only made his nerve endings spark like a Roman candle.

Geoff bit lightly at his lip, and Nic gasped, loud enough that it might’ve been embarrassing had he been willing to spare any scrap of awareness towards caring. As it was, his pulse outpaced his thoughts. If he didn’t stop to think, it felt only natural to deepen the kiss, to slide his hands under Geoff’s shirt and pull him closer, to feel a certain thrill at smooth skin and the strength of Geoff’s arms, how carefully he cradled Nic’s head so that when he overbalanced, only Nic’s back hit the brick wall behind them with a thump.

Geoff gave an inquiring hum, a wordless _are you okay_ , and Nic kissed him harder because yes, obviously he was okay, wedged between solid brick and muscled, warm body, this was the most okay he’d been in recent memory. Thank god for Nic’s drunken stumbling; why had he never made out with someone while pinned against a wall before? Why had he never pressed up against someone and—Jesus, Geoff knew what to do with his mouth.

“Wow,” said Geoff, breaking off to pant against Nic’s jawline, “you’re, uh, really into this.”

Nic barely understood the premise of the sentence. He couldn’t imagine hearing that half-wrecked rumble in his ear, and responding with anything but a blinding wave of lust. It felt like diving underwater, or doing E, or fully inhabiting his body for once, for whole seconds at a time. Even Nic’s fingertips burned.

“Yeah,” said Nic. He thought he might’ve said it, at any rate. Part of him wanted Geoff to keep talking, wanted to curl around his voice like a cat, but stringing that many words together was an insurmountable challenge. He abandoned it in favor of kissing Geoff again, and again. Geoff slipped a thigh between Nic’s legs, made a low, hungry sound at the way Nic’s hips bucked forward, involuntary.

It wasn’t a surprise to realize he was hard in his jeans—how could he not be—or to feel that Geoff was, too. The surprise was his own lack of reservation, how seemingly every cell in Nic’s body was onboard with this plan.

His skin was buzzing again. “Hey,” Geoff murmured against his lips. The sound and the feeling made Nic want to kiss him more, but Geoff turned his face away, leaving Nic to trail a string of kisses down his neck. It did interesting things to Geoff’s breathing. “Hey,” said Geoff, half-laughing, pulling back a few inches. “Uh, I think your phone’s going off?”

Nic stared at the line of his throat. “What?”

“Your phone,” said Geoff, as Nic’s language centers struggled to come back online. _How could you possibly know that?_ Nic thought. “In your front pocket,” said Geoff.

They were pressed together chest to thigh; Geoff could probably feel the vibration more than he could. That also explained why the buzzy feeling had been centered around Nic’s left leg.

Geoff stepped back, smirking as Nic fished for his phone with clumsy, distracted fingers. Nic would’ve said “fuck it” and switched the ringer off, but at two in the morning, it likely wasn’t a social call. He swallowed and pressed the receiver to his ear.

“Hello?”

Nobody answered.

_“Hello?”_

It was a text.

He squinted at the screen. “...Uber’s here,” he announced. In fact, he realized with a guilty pang, he had three separate messages to that effect. “Possibly had been for a while,” he added ruefully. “Which car do you think—”

“White Camry at the corner,” said Geoff, indicating with a nod of his head.

“The one with the lady glaring at us like we’ve made her idle at the curb for five minutes?” Nic guessed.

“Yep.”

Geoff started down the street and Nic trailed after him, already missing the physical contact. Would it be weird to try to hold Geoff’s hand, he wondered. Maybe it would be. After all, this wasn’t a date, it was—Nic had no idea what it was. 

Inside the car, it was sweltering. The driver was a middle-aged woman with severely dyed red hair, who responded to both of Nic’s attempts at small talk by cranking up the volume on the radio. Gospel music, played at decibels usually reserved for death metal.

“It’s not far,” said Nic. “Less than ten minutes.”

“Cool,” said Geoff.

A bead of sweat slid down Nic’s spine. He flopped around, wrestling off the jacket from under his seatbelt.

“Aw hey,” Geoff said, “you can hold onto that if—”

“It’s a very short walk,” Nic explained, “and it’s not as though I’ll need a jacket once we’re at my place.”

“Guess not,” said Geoff, in a tone that retroactively made Nic’s comment dirtier than intended.

The driver pointedly reached for the volume knob. The look she shot Nic in the rearview mirror gave him a sudden flashback to the time in junior high when his Sunday school teacher found him in the church basement, leafing through a library copy of _The Satanic Bible_. Twelve-year-old Nic’s interest had been, of course, purely academic, but Mrs. Wade hadn’t seen it that way, and from then on he was no longer allowed to babysit her kids.

Not that it was exactly the same look, Nic thought, shifting in his seat. Or at least, it shouldn’t have been. Politics aside, trading innuendo with another man was hardly on par with Satanism. He glanced over at Geoff, who was looking out the window, absently nodding along to the beat of the music. It was hard to tell if he was trolling the driver, or genuinely enjoying the gospel choir. They were pretty good.

Nic watched Geoff’s lips shape the words _glory glory, hallelujah_ and realized her problem had to be less about the innuendo and more about what it represented, what she thought they were going to do once they made it home.

What they were, in fact, going to do.

Well, what Nic hoped they were going to do.

Twenty minutes ago, he had been shocked at himself for daring to even kiss Geoff. For wanting to, in the first place. You could make the argument that he was moving just a bit too fast with all of this.

Geoff turned in time to catch him looking and raised his eyebrows, set one hand very deliberately on Nic’s knee. It wasn’t so different from all of the casual touching they’d done in the bar, but with his lips still bruised from kissing, it felt charged, electric.

Nic was absolutely moving too fast. That said, so far tonight, moving too fast seemed to be working out pretty well.

 

By the time the car rolled to a stop outside the familiar row of townhouses, Geoff’s palm rested halfway up Nic’s thigh, and the driver had blown out her speakers. She still wouldn’t surrender the volume dial, leaving the stereo to blare on, fuzzy and distorted—praise transmissions from the bottom of the ocean.

“Sorry,” said Nic as they slammed the doors behind them and started up the front path, ears ringing.

“Hey man.” They were too far from the street for the lamp light to reach Geoff’s face, but the jacket was still balled up in his hands. “We had a talk about that word.”

“No,” said Nic, “I mean—for subjecting you to whatever time vortex just happened. That ride took _way, way_ longer than ten minutes, right?”

“Did feel kinda slow,” Geoff agreed. They reached the front step and Geoff casually hooked his chin on Nic’s shoulder, slipping a hand into Nic’s back pocket. It was so natural, so nonchalantly intimate that as Nic fiddled with his keys, he couldn’t stop wondering how often Geoff did this kind of thing. By this point, the two of them had traveled well beyond the bounds of the bro code; maybe Geoff hooked up with dudes in bars all the time. Maybe this was his normal Saturday night.

That thought—that this was somewhat routine for Geoff, that at least one of them had a handle on what they were doing—was not as reassuring as it could’ve been, somehow. He wasn’t sure he wanted to require that kind of generosity, that kind of patience.

“Need a hand with the lock?” Geoff murmured.

His breath, warm against the shell of Nic’s ear, brought with it a sudden flash of insight.

“Before,” said Nic, “with the air hockey. You absolutely were doing the thing.”

The last tooth of the key finally connected with the tumbler. Nic felt the lock give with a twist of his wrist. Geoff lifted his chin off Nic’s shoulder.

“I mean,” Geoff said, almost sheepish, “I was trying.”

“You—” Nic replayed that moment—Geoff’s body wrapped around his, Geoff’s voice low and coaxing—and added intent to the picture. Geoff had touched him like that, wanting this. The revelation made him almost stupid with desire. He twisted around to drag Geoff down by the scruff of his neck, kissed him open-mouthed and insistent until Geoff let out a breath that was either a laugh or a sigh, enough for Nic to slip his tongue past Geoff’s lips. Geoff hummed, pleased, and squeezed a handful of Nic’s ass with the hand still wedged in his back pocket.

Nic began to lose track of time, just a little.

“We should—ah,” Geoff managed after a few minutes, “we should maybe go inside—”

He had a point, Nic thought, groping behind himself for the doorknob without breaking the kiss. The door swung open. He yanked the key free and walked backwards into the house, tugging Geoff past the welcome mat and into the unlit front hall. Geoff kicked the door shut, and Nic pulled him down the hallway with long, impatient steps, not sure if it was worth it to try for the bedroom when his living room couch was on the other side of the wall and—the back of his legs collided with something moving and alive.

Nic jerked his head around, fumbled for the lights.

No intruder. No—something worse. Just the dog.

“What,” said Geoff, as Hop lunged at him, barking cheerfully. “Aw, hey. Who’s this?”

“My dog,” said Nic.

“Yeah, no shit.”

Hop jumped up to plant her front paws on Geoff’s thighs. “Down, girl,” said Nic. “Down.”

Geoff dropped to a crouch, reaching out to scratch between her ears. “Who’s a good girl,” he said to Hop. It wasn’t a syrupy talking-to-babies-and-animals voice. It was almost his regular cadence, just slightly softer, maybe. Free of irony. “Who’s a good—yeah, it’s you, you’re the good girl.” Geoff worked his fingers into the fur at her neck. Hop panted at him, tail whipping back and forth so wildly that the back half of her body swayed with it.

“Making a new friend,” said Nic.

“What’s her name?”

“I call her Hop.”

“Okay,” said Geoff, rubbing Hop’s sides. He gave Nic a shrewd look. “But what’s her name?”

Not much got past him.

“It’s something embarrassing, right?” Geoff went on, with relish. “Oh man, don’t tell me you’re one of those white people who names their dog Pookie or Snookums.”

“No,” said Nic. There was no way to say it with dignity. Nic had long ago given up trying. “Uh, her name is Gerard Manley Hopkins.”

“What,” said Geoff.

“He was a nineteenth century poet.”

“...what.”

“Never let a very drunk Alex Reagan name your pet.”

“Gotcha.” Hop barked, headbutting Geoff’s hand. “Yeah,” he said to her, scratching between her shoulder blades, “I was falling down on the job, huh?” She huffed. “Good girl. Sorry those white people gave you such a stupid name.”

“ _Is_ it a white thing?” Nic asked.

Geoff snorted. “Have you ever met a black person with a dog named Gerard?”

It didn’t seem like Geoff was planning to get up any time soon. Nic leaned against the wall. “Not that I know of, but I doubt I could prove it either way,” he said.

"Yeah, I don’t really think it’s a problem in our community. Not to be racist or anything, but—"

"Sure, some of your best friends are white," Nic supplied.

"I mean, my dad's white, actually," said Geoff. "So I've got white cousins. They're okay. Some of 'em." He hummed. “What kind of dog is she?”

“The lady at the shelter said they thought she was part labrador. Otherwise, nobody’s sure.”

“So, a mix,” said Geoff with a crooked smile. He swept his thumbs over the top of Hop’s head and looked into her eyes. “Don’t ever let anyone tell you you’re too labrador,” he told her seriously. “Or not labrador enough. You’re fine just the way you are.”

Nic worried at a thumbnail, at loose ends. _Should I leave you two alone for a while,_ he wanted to say, but it sounded unfairly snide in his head.

“If she’s bothering you,” Nic started.

“Nah,” said Geoff. “Me and Gerard, we get each other. Why,” he added with a laugh, looking up at last from where Hop was writhing with glee on the floor, “are you jealous?”

“A bit,” said Nic. Geoff blinked at him. “She hasn’t been that affectionate with me for a while. Uh, ever since I got back from—”

“Tanis?”

“...wherever I was.”

“And you think it’s related?”

“I know it’s stupid, but.” Nic bit his lip. “I don’t know, I think maybe she can smell it on me? That I’m—not quite the same, or.”

“Well, look,” said Geoff. He was still petting Hop but his eyes were on Nic now. “You were gone for a while. Maybe didn’t feel like it from your end, but out here, you were just—missing, for days, so—”

“I don’t think she’s got the cognitive skills to hold a grudge like that,” said Nic.

“You’d be surprised.” Geoff glanced back down at Hop. “They're smarter than we give ‘em credit for.”

“She’s afraid of the air vents,” Nic argued. “And the blender. And the toaster, for some reason.”

“Guessing she can still tell the difference between you being here or not being here,” said Geoff, rededicating his attention to the fur at the top of Hop’s head. Hop gazed adoringly at Geoff, tail thwapping the ground like a blissed-out metronome. “Right, girl? Look at the intelligence in those eyes.”

“You’re just biassed because she loves you,” said Nic.

“Aw.” Hop flopped over, sticking her paws in the air, and Geoff leaned in to rub her belly. “Hey,” he said to her quietly. “Is he right? Are we best friends now, Gerard? Are we best friends?” His smile was wide and goofy and easy in a way it hadn’t been since they’d left the bar. Since before that, maybe.

The polite thing to do, probably, would be to retrieve Geoff’s jacket from the floor, or offer him something to drink, or even just stop staring at him for a second. Nic couldn’t look away from Geoff’s face. It made his throat ache.

Tomorrow afternoon, Geoff would be heading back to Everett, which meant that he wouldn’t be here, with his sarcasm and his permanent bedhead, squatting in the hallway and winning away the affections of Nic’s dog without even trying. That future absence smarted.

_If you stay in town another week, you can play with my dog as much as you want,_ Nic considered saying, before the rest of his brain caught up with him. He gave himself a mental shake.

“How long’ve you had her?” Geoff asked.

“Two years,” said Nic. “She was a weird-looking puppy.”

“Oh man.” Geoff sat back on his haunches. “Are there photos?” Nic laughed. “What?”

“My phone has a—genuinely embarrassing number of puppy selfies,” Nic admitted.

“Not cool,” said Geoff. “You can’t say that and not deliver.”

“Hang on,” said Nic, fumbling for his phone. He scrolled back through his photos. “So, the week I got Hop, Alex was having a rough time,” he explained. “She was just getting out of a relationship, work was frustrating, stuff like that. We started this game where she’d send me a complaint, and I’d send her—”

“A puppy selfie?” Geoff finished, eyebrows climbing up his forehead. “This is the best day of my life, man. Gimme your phone.” Hop had curled up in the middle of the hallway, Geoff petting along her back in long strokes. He stretched out his other arm to take the phone, but Nic settled down next to him on the tile instead; he wanted _some_ executive control over which embarrassing puppy selfies Geoff saw.

Nic opened the first photo of the set: Hop and him, both wearing shades. In Hop’s case, it was a pair of child’s sunglasses Nic had found in his backyard a few months earlier, carefully balanced on her snout.

“I offered to sic Hop on this guy who was giving Alex a hard time,” said Nic, “and she made a joke about how neither me nor Hop are all that intimidating, so this was us trying to look tough.”

“Her sunglasses have Pokémon on ‘em,” said Geoff.

“Charizard is a _dragon_ ,” said Nic. “I’m sorry, do you want to fight a dragon, Geoff?”

“Like, right now?” said Geoff. “Okay, fine, you’re both real scary.”

Nic scrolled to the next picture. Hop lay sacked out on top of an old PNWS sweatshirt, sprawled so flat she seemed more liquid than dog. “See, here you get a better sense of how she looked. She sort of—had to grow into those paws. And the legs. And the ears.”

Geoff scoffed. “Shut your lying mouth, she’s beautiful and you know it.”

“Yeah.” Nic reached over to pat her head. Hop cracked one eye open and gracelessly scooted a few inches closer to him.

“See,” said Geoff, “she still loves you. You must not’ve changed that much.”

“I was wearing your clothes earlier,” Nic pointed out. “I probably just smell like you.”

Geoff shrugged. “Well, if it’s that simple, you’re welcome to borrow my jacket for a while, confuse your dog?”

_Or you could just stay here,_ Nic thought, which was—wildly unreasonable, he got that. Also, not an actual solution to the problem.

He couldn’t deny, though, that it was in keeping with the general trajectory of his thoughts tonight. His thoughts, which kept circling back to Geoff, as if drawn in by gravity. But that made sense, Nic figured. Geoff was fun, and smart, and he had a great smile. Surely anyone would want him around. Surely anyone would—

(Nic closed his eyes for a second, remembering out of the blue what Alex had said the next day about that photo of sleeping Hop: _“You realize now that you’re doomed, right? From here on out, you will only be able to date someone who loves that dog as much as you do.”_ )

He glanced over at Geoff, who was still patting Hop’s flank, making a fond face at her weird, snuffly snores. He noted the curve of Geoff’s lips, the surprising gentleness of his hands. He had been noting these things all night.

Something clicked into place just then. Or rather, a long series of somethings clicked into place, all at once—a punchline finally revealing itself, or a cipher throwing a message into sudden sharp relief.

Oh. Shit.

“Hey,” said Geoff, turning. Their shoulders brushed. Geoff smiled, cautious in a way that made Nic’s chest feel tight. The hypothesis held.

Nic jumped to his feet. “I’ll be right back,” he said.

“Okay.” Geoff’s brow furrowed. Furrowed _adorably_ —there was no other word for it.

“You can—if you want to sit down, like, on furniture, the living room’s just through there.”

“Okay,” said Geoff.

“I’ll be right back,” Nic repeated, backing out of the hallway. “I just—I’ll be right back.”

 

In the bathroom, Nic closed the door behind himself and took a few deep breaths. When he glanced at the mirror, he looked no different than usual. Maybe his hair was a little messy from one of the times he and Geoff had kissed, but his face was unchanged.

“Okay,” he muttered under his breath. “It’s okay. Gender and orientation both exist along a spectrum.”

The phrase came to him fully formed but he wasn’t sure where he’d picked it up. It sounded like the kind of thing Alex might say, maybe in the wee hours of the morning when she and Amalia started in on the patriarchy. He had a vague memory from a couple of years ago: the three of them huddled on a couch somewhere, Amalia half-shouting, “Who you love, how you feel attraction, is not—it’s not a goddamned toggle switch!” and waving an empty bottle of wine for emphasis.

Amalia. He missed her, and not just because he suspected she would’ve somehow had a handle on what was going on. He could have used a dose of her fearlessness and wild stories, the lightness and ease she brought to any situation when she was at her best.

That first night she came over, they’d tried to hook up, but it had petered out with some very half-hearted, distracted kissing.

“Sorry,” she’d said, at last, when he’d asked what was bothering her. “Alex has been very strange to me lately. I don’t think she trusts me since I got back.”

Nic hadn’t known what to say to that, chiefly because he thought Amalia might be right. But Alex hadn't said anything about it out loud, and Nic hadn't been quite sure how to start that line of questioning: _Hey, Alex, are you honestly trying to imply that our friend seems different because she’s allied herself with biblical monsters? Uh, are you sure she’s not just tired?_

Cults and conspiracies were one thing, but demons? It was ridiculous.

Besides, if it was true, the implications were—they didn’t even bear thinking about.

More importantly, it was ridiculous. _Demons_. (Well— _Magical forests_. But Nic still wasn’t sure he’d been to Tanis.)

Amalia slept on his couch now, when she was around. She had never asked him about his own thoughts that night, was only a relief.

He splashed some water on his face. It was probably good to have some perspective about just how the various problems in his life stacked up, he thought. Wanting to kiss Geoff wasn’t even a problem. Or rather—admitting to himself that the desire to kiss Geoff was not a random aberration brought on by a few restless weeks, that it operated the same way those urges always did, and for the same reasons. He’d spent the whole evening with Geoff and it didn’t feel like enough. Together, this painted a certain picture.

“Orientation is a spectrum, and anyway, most—most categories aren’t absolute,” Nic said in an undertone, wiping his face with the hand towel. It felt like a cop-out. He met his reflection’s eyes in the mirror. “You have a crush on a man,” he said.

Better.

 

He found Geoff on the living room couch, paging through Nic’s tattered copy of _Something Wicked This Way Comes_.

“Oh hey,” Geoff said, glancing up at him. “I let the dog out. She was pawing at the side door and since there’s a fence all the way around, I figured—”

“Yeah,” Nic said, “that’s fine.” He dropped into the armchair across from Geoff, trying to look casual but unable to stop wringing his hands for some reason.

“Uh, did something happen?” said Geoff.

“No,” said Nic. “Well—yes, kind of?” There was no point in putting it off. “I think I’m bi,” he said. He stopped, considered how that sounded. “I’m actually—I’m actually pretty sure. That I’m bi.”

“Okay,” said Geoff slowly, and Nic wouldn’t have been able to say what reaction, exactly, he’d been expecting, but Geoff’s outright confusion threw him a loop. “That’s—guess I assumed? I listen to the show, there's some definite flirting between you and MK.”

It took a second to parse this. “No, what I was getting at is, I’m attracted to men.”

Geoff set down the book. He squinted at Nic, head bobbing in an almost deranged nod. “Uh. Dude. Do you, uh, do you need the play-by-play on how I worked that out?”

“No, of course.” Nic let out a breath, scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Sorry, I’m—well, _I_ only worked it out just now, and it seemed like the type of thing I should tell someone, at any rate? To say it out loud?”

“Wait,” said Geoff, “when you say ‘just now’, are we talking…a week, or—”

“Well, how long was I gone for?” said Nic.

There was a beat of silence.

“ _Just-now_ , just now?” Geoff said. “Thirty-seconds-ago, just now.”

“Yes.”

“And not, for instance.” Geoff opened his mouth, closed it, gave Nic a searching look. “Half an hour ago, y’know, when we were making out in a parking lot.” He said it like the feeling of Geoff’s hand in his hair and Geoff’s mouth on his might have somehow slipped Nic’s mind.

“…in retrospect,” Nic admitted, “that was—a key clue.”

“But not at the time.”

“At the time, I wasn’t examining it?” said Nic.

“Wow,” Geoff said. “That’s—what’s that like.”

There was an almost strangled quality to his voice, as if choking on disbelief or sarcasm or both, but Nic couldn’t pass up the chance to explain himself, to drag any salvageable part of the evening back to shore.

“Have you ever been out in nature, hiking or camping,” Nic started, “and you look up and you see a wild animal—nothing dangerous—a hawk or a crane or a fawn—but it’s so unexpected, and so sudden that it almost doesn't seem real to you? You’re standing there, watching it, and you feel yourself start to freeze, like an instinct, because you’re sure somehow that if you even breathe wrong, it’ll vanish. It’ll have never been there in the first place.”

The metaphor was maybe ten seconds away from unspooling. Nic sighed. “I don’t know, it felt good and I maybe wasn’t, uh, really prepared. For that.”

“Well, thanks a lot,” said Geoff.

“No,” said Nic, “I don’t—not because it was you, I’m just not used to things feeling—it’s been a weird—” He broke off, trying to locate the point in his life where everything had gotten weird. Longer than a few weeks. Months sounded histrionic, but was technically true. “It’s been weird,” he finished weakly.

“See,” said Geoff, sighing. “I was all set to give you shit about this, but way to take all the fun right outta that.”

“Any time,” said Nic with a wan smile.

Geoff tipped his head back to regard the ceiling. “Guess in a way, I’m flattered?” he said. “Being the guy to kick off your gay crisis. That’s something, right?”

“Okay,” Nic broke in, “bisexual, first of all. Also, it’s not a _crisis_ —“

Geoff leveled his gaze back on Nic. “No?”

“No,” said Nic.

“Really?” said Geoff. “‘Cause I’ll be honest, man.” He let out a long breath. “When you don’t pick up on something for this long, kinda seems like it’s maybe because you don’t want to.”

“No,” Nic said again. “It’s—a relief to understand. I’d always rather know the truth. Always. I mean, there’s a reason I’m doing this with my life and not teaching high school English.” Geoff eyed him warily from the couch and said nothing. “Hey,” said Nic, “do I seem like I’m panicking?”

“And after this many years, you’re not—”

“Keep in mind,” said Nic, “if you go back far enough in my search history, there’s a long stretch that’s just ’severed foot’ and then the names of various coastal towns. And that’s on my work computer. And it was _for work_.”

“That foot thing is fucking creepy,” said Geoff.

“Yeah.”

“You know you probably got yourself on some government watch lists for that.”

“Probably,” Nic agreed. “I don’t know, it doesn’t register anymore because that’s a normal week for me. That’s everything going _well_ , that’s when there aren’t any cryptic threats or eerie recordings or—”

“When you don’t disappear into the woods for six days,” Geoff finished.

“Five.”

“Six,” said Geoff. “I had a calendar, you didn’t. It was six, man.”

He had a point. Besides, what was the difference, really, in the exact length of time Nic couldn’t account for?

“Six, then,” he conceded. “But my point is, ‘crisis’ is—a very relative term. Being straight was never central to my identity.”

“But you’re really telling me you had no fucking idea before now?” said Geoff. “Like, thirtyish years—no interest, no interest, no interest and then bam.”

“It’s not that I’ve never had a flicker,” said Nic. _A flicker_ , Geoff mouthed, eyebrows drawn together. “But—everyone notices attractive men, that doesn’t—“

“So, number one, bet there are some lesbians who don’t,” said Geoff. “And two, define _notice_.”

“Huh,” said Nic, mentally resorting a few memories, a few cases of hero worship that in retrospect might’ve been more like crushes. That journalism major his freshman year in college, with the tattoos— “…huh.”

Geoff nodded like Nic’s silence was proof of something. “See?” he said. “Yeah. Are we in the crisis now?”

“There’s no crisis,” Nic told him. _Just finally getting a handle on some old social interactions._ He dug around in his mind for an example, in case that would make Geoff stop nervously tapping one foot on the carpet. “Come to think of it, I remember noticing you.”

The tapping slowed. “Uh, so any time you wanna expand on _notice_ ,” Geoff started.

“Oh, it’s not—I don’t have much of a story or anything,” said Nic. “But I know I struggled on the narration for that episode, where it talks about meeting you.” He chewed on his thumbnail. “Trying to describe you without making it, uh, distracting.”

“Right on,” said Geoff. His posture was a little easier. “D’you remember what you wound up going with?”

“Honestly, no,” Nic admitted. “The show was still having sound problems. I was up until four that night working on the edits and I rewrote my voiceover so many times that—”

“Average height,” said Geoff.

“What?”

“That’s what you—that’s what made the final cut. You said I was ‘about average height’.”

“Shit,” said Nic. “Are you sure?”

“It’s not every day you spend six hours flirting with a guy at a bar only to hear him describe you to the world as average height,” said Geoff. Nic’s face must have done something just then—reflected the barest sliver of his complete and utter mortification—because Geoff shook his head. “Nah, I’m just razzing you. You said some other stuff, too. Apparently my eyes are piercing or sharp or—cutting, I don’t know.”

“They are,” Nic said absently because with the full burn of shame subsiding, the first half of Geoff’s statement was beginning to sink in. “Hang on—flirting? You were flirting with me?”

“Okay.” Geoff coughed. “Starting to get why it took you so long to notice you were bi.”

He tried to think back to that first conversation. Aside from the intrigue with Karl’s mysterious Craigslist posting, Nic’s main impression was of that night was Geoff giving him a hard time, but in a friendly way, with a lot of direct eye contact.

Nic also had an unexpectedly vivid memory of how Geoff’s lips looked wrapped around a beer bottle. Come to think of it, that might not have been a coincidence. He dug the heels of palms into his eyes, like that was going to clear up his thinking.

“Wow, sorry,” Nic muttered, and even without glancing up, he could sense Geoff tensing at the word.

“What’d we say about—“

“No,” said Nic, “you know what? I’m retracting my original sorry. Back when I was apologizing because I was worried the kiss would freak you out, and you told me ‘it is what it is,’ which, now that I think about it, is kind of a strange thing to say to someone you’ve been flirting with since—”

“Wait,” Geoff interjected, eyes wide. “Your sorry was about the kiss?”

“I kissed you and then said sorry,” said Nic blankly. “What else would that have been about?”

Geoff gave him a long, considering look. “I think you and I were having two very different conversations.”

“Yeah,” said Nic. He sighed. “I really should’ve been able to put that together sooner.”

“We all gotta face things about ourselves,” Geoff said solemnly. “I’ve had to accept that I was willing to go home with the kind of guy who would name his dog Gerard.”

It was as if all the air came rushing back into the room.

Nic tried to look annoyed. “Alex,” he said, “not me.”

“So you keep saying.” Geoff crossed his legs, getting comfortable. There was a looseness to his shoulders that looked good on him. Maybe it was Hop’s influence. He tilted his head to one side. “Was he any good? The poet, I mean. Gerard Manley Hopper.”

“Hopkins,” said Nic.

“Yeah, never heard of him.”

“I hadn’t either, until Alex,” Nic explained. “I used to read some of his stuff to Hop, back when she was a puppy. Honor the namesake.”

“Of course you did,” Geoff murmured, so low that it didn’t seem designed to be heard. He stretched his arms above his head, letting one of them drop to rest along the back of the couch. It made Nic wish he hadn’t opted for the armchair. “So—greatest hits?”

“A lot of very Victorian stuff,” said Nic. “But he’s got this one I like. One of the few poems I ever bothered to memorize, actually.”

“Yeah?” Geoff sat back expectantly, raised his eyebrows.

Nic half-rolled his eyes. “Okay, I’m coming over there, then. I’m not going to shout this poem at you.”

Geoff gestured at the available couch cushion, and Nic settled in sideways to face him, no longer drunk but slightly giddy to be sitting this close again after his recent revelations.

“It’s called ‘Inversnaid,’” said Nic. “It’s about—”

“I can figure out it,” said Geoff.

“It’s not a surprise,” Nic told him. “It’s about a stream.” He poked Geoff in the shoulder. “That’s gonna help you a lot, knowing that.”

“Well, thanks, then.” Geoff smiled like he was trying not to laugh.

Nic took a deep breath and began:

“This darksome burn, horseback brown,  
His rollrock highroad roaring down,  
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam  
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.”

Nic was half-prepared for some wry comment but none came. Geoff didn’t even seem to be trying for one. He watched Nic talk, lips parted slightly.

“A windpuff-bonnet of fawn-froth  
Turns and twindles over the broth  
Of a pool so pitchblack, fell-frowning,  
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.”

There was nothing sexy about the lines themselves but the unflinching quality of Geoff’s gaze, the focus in his canny brown eyes, tested Nic’s concentration. He swallowed and went on.

“Degged with dew, dappled with dew,  
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,  
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,  
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.”

Geoff’s arm rested on the back of the couch. Nic’s hand rested on Geoff’s arm. He wasn’t totally sure when that had happened, but at some point, Geoff had swayed forward, or possibly they both had, because their faces were close enough together that Nic could finish at a near whisper:

“What would the world be, once bereft  
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,  
O let them be left, wildness and wet;  
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.”

Neither of them moved away. They blinked at each other. Up close, Geoff’s eyelashes were astonishing.

“Uh, just so we’re clear,” said Geoff. “Are you trying to seduce me with a creepy poem about the wilderness.”

“Had to get creative, since I don’t own an air hockey table,” said Nic.

A corner of Geoff’s mouth twitched. “Look, if you’re just gonna insult my technique—”

“Believe me,” said Nic, “I have no problems with your _technique_.”

“You couldn’t tell I was flirting,” Geoff pointed out.

“I couldn’t tell I was into men.”

“Yeah,” said Geoff. He shook his head, laughing. “That one’s on you, buddy.”

Nic kissed him. Part of him was still expecting Geoff to pull away and fire off a clever retort, which was maybe why Nic’s heart clenched a bit at what Geoff did instead, which was to completely melt into it.

It was better this way, Nic thought, coaxing Geoff’s mouth open, because this time it wasn’t a race and he could take his time with it, catalogue Geoff’s sounds and the subtle changes in his breathing, slide a hand down Geoff’s side and laugh at how it made him squirm, ticklish.

Also, this time they were indoors. They had barely managed that before.

“Hey,” said Nic, pulling back so they were nose to nose.

“Hey.” Geoff smiled. His eyes were dark and a little unfocused.

“Why did you think I was saying sorry?”

“What?” said Geoff. Nic had crowded so far into his space that he was bent almost backwards over the armrest. The angle looked perilous.  Nic gave him room to sit upright, reorient.

“When I apologized outside the bar,” said Nic. “You didn’t think it was for kissing you. What was—”

“Shit, I dunno,” said Geoff, with a somewhat convincing smirk, “you’re a Canadian and a public radio guy. Most of the time when you say ‘sorry’ I figure it’s a reflex and you can’t control it.”

Nic pressed his lips together. “Come on. ‘It is what it is’?”

Geoff exhaled slowly.

“Tell me,” said Nic.

“You said, uh,” Geoff stammered. “I mean, you were throwing around a lot of apologies, but really, it makes sense that a guy who’s been to hell and back—maybe literally, we don’t know—wouldn’t want, or wouldn’t be up for, you know...”

“It seems pretty safe to assume I don’t know,” said Nic. “Wouldn’t want what?”

Geoff’s eyes were somewhere between the wall and the ceiling. “I dunno, whatever a guy in that situation might maybe otherwise want, or be up for?” He winced.

Thankfully, Nic was sober enough to navigate the grammar. “So you assumed maybe we weren’t going to go any further than kissing?”

“Figured we weren’t gonna go any further than you wanted to go, full stop,” said Geoff. “Which is fair, because again, hell and back.”

Nic’s breath caught in his throat. He swallowed. “That’s—that’s actually very sweet,” he managed.

Geoff shrugged. “Common fucking sense.”

“No,” said Nic, “it is. It’s sweet.” The only way to get close without bending Geoff half over the armrest again was to more or less crawl into his lap, so that’s what Nic did, one knee on either side. Geoff brought his hands up to rest lightly at the small of Nic’s back, and Nic leaned down to kiss him again. It was novel being taller, he thought, scattering kisses across Geoff’s jaw to his earlobe.

“Also,” Nic murmured into his ear, “I bet I’m up for more than you think I am.”

They were close enough that Nic could feel Geoff shudder just a little. “Slow down, Rambo,” said Geoff, in a breathy near-laugh.“You’ve been bi for less than an hour.”

“Just because I didn’t know what I wanted before doesn’t mean I didn’t want it,” said Nic, drawing back to look him in the eye. “So if you’re still—”

Geoff dragged him back down for another kiss, which gave way to several more. “We could move this to a bed,” Nic said, once he’d freed his mouth again. “We—I mean, we could. We have that technology.”

“A working mattress,” said Geoff. “The podcast game’s treating you that well?”

“I actually bought it back when we were still on terrestrial radio,” said Nic, “but it’s pretty decent. No complaints.” His hands were busy slipping under the hem of Geoff's shirt, so he indicated the bedroom door with his head. “If you feel like trying it out—”

“Wow,” said Geoff, full of playful disdain. “Pickup lines? Wow.”

“Sorry,” said Nic, “but you walked right into it, I didn’t have a choice.”

“For the record, man,” Geoff said, “I really don’t mind taking things slow, if you want—” He broke off, arching forward, probably because Nic had used the distraction to drag his palms across Geoff’s skin and press both thumbs into the taut muscles over his hipbones.

“I think,” said Nic, “uh, I think we should start communicating better.”

“I...see your point,” said Geoff with a considering nod.

“If we’re talking about what I want,” said Nic, “what I want is to go back to my room, take off our clothes, and have sex. With each other.” He tipped their foreheads together. “I don’t actually know how to be more direct than that.”

“Well, that’s.” Geoff craned his neck to kiss Nic lightly on the lips. “That’s pretty direct. Do you have condoms?”

“No,” said Nic. “Sorry. But I was thinking, we could keep it simple and just—I like your hands. A lot. Uh, actually, that’s something else I’d—noticed before.”

“Yeah?” This time, Geoff’s smirk was effortless. “Good to know.”

“And I was thinking,” Nic went on, “you were pretty patient teaching me about air hockey.” He captured the hand that was toying in his hair and tangled their fingers together. “So maybe you could do something similar, and show me how to—”

“Nic,” said Geoff, “is this is gonna be an air hockey sex pun? Full disclosure, if it is, I am jumping out the window and hitching my way back to Everett.”

“You’re safe,” said Nic.

“Thank god,” Geoff told him. “Because to be honest, I might’ve let you get away with it.”

Nic ducked his head, unable to do anything about the dopey smile spreading over his face. Geoff patted Nic’s thigh with his free hand.

“Up,” said Geoff. “Lead the way.”

 

Much later, when their clothes were a scattered heap by the side of the bed and Nic had learned that yes, Geoff really was that good with his hands and also that the sounds Geoff made being kissed were nothing compared to the sounds he made nearing orgasm, they sprawled together on the mattress, trying to get their breath back.

Nic propped himself up on one arm, watching Geoff’s chest rise and fall in the low light. With his eyes closed, Geoff looked—younger wasn’t the word. Less guarded, maybe. His lashes were as dark as the ink on his hip, the edges of a tattoo that couldn’t be deciphered from this angle.

They were lying sideways on the bed, Nic realized, perpendicular to the pillows. It hadn’t seemed important at the time.

“C’mon,” said Nic.

Geoff squinted and stretched his arms over his head, loose-limbed and languid, muscle shifting under skin. Nic had nowhere approaching enough energy for another round, but his mouth went a little dry nonetheless. He swallowed and pulled himself upright.

“You can’t sleep like that,” Nic said. He tugged at Geoff’s bicep. “Hey, how many blankets do you want?”

“Mmh?” Geoff blinked as if his eyes were adjusting to the light. “Uh, man, I don’t know, I kick off anything heavier than a sheet.”

Nic nodded. All the more for him, then. “Get up here.” As Geoff roused himself enough to navigate the mattress, Nic asked, as offhandedly as he could, “So, how long d’you think you’ll be able to stay tomorrow?”

“What?”

“Well,” Nic amended, curling onto his side and wrapping himself in the duvet, “today, since it’s technically been morning for a while.”

Geoff executed a sort of belly flop next to him and peered up from the pillow. “I need to say goodbye to the people I’m staying with, and I have to be back for work Monday. Otherwise I don’t have much going on.”

“Good.” Nic hesitated, then draped his arm over Geoff’s bare back. Neither of them said anything for a moment. Then Geoff let out a puff of air that was maybe a laugh. “What,” said Nic, “problems?” He started to lift his arm away but Geoff rolled over in time to wrap a hand lightly around Nic’s wrist.

“No,” said Geoff. “Not at all.” Nic inched forward, let the arm settle more. “Just—guess that settles the question of whether or not you’ll be able to look me in the eye tomorrow.”

“Of course I’ll—why would that—”

There was no way to see his face, but something in the way Geoff fidgeted gave Nic the impression he regretted bringing it up. “Let’s just say I’ve slept with guys who were early in the whole coming out process, and it’s, uh. It’s always a gamble, how they’re gonna deal with it later.”

Nic’s throat stung. “Uh, hey,” he started, burrowing closer without consciously deciding to do it.

“No, it’s cool,” said Geoff, but Nic noticed he made no effort to free himself. On the contrary, he cuddled in, tucking Nic’s hand to his chest. “It was a long time ago. And anyway, we’re talking Bush-era military, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, so not like I didn’t know I was taking a risk.” He yawned.

“But still.”

“Oh, it was shitty, don’t get me wrong,” Geoff said, voice starting to slur with sleep. “But I mean, it’s like anything. Some people were fine about it, too. Can’t dwell forever, you know?”

“Yeah,” said Nic. “I guess that—makes sense.”

Was this a bad time to ask him to breakfast, to try to couch an invitation in the syntax of a date and gauge Geoff’s reaction?

“Dude, feel free to keep talking if you want,” said Geoff, “but I’m falling asleep, like, end of this sentence.”

Okay, probably. On the bright side, given the state of Nic’s sleep schedule, now he would almost certainly have time to practice his phrasing a few times before Geoff woke up.

In the end, Geoff managed to stay awake for another five minutes or so. Nic could tell, even when conversation lulled, by the steady sweep of Geoff’s thumb against his wrist.

“And man, don’t worry about your dog,” Geoff mumbled shortly before he dropped off, as though they’d been discussing it for hours. He yawned again. “Give her some time, she’ll be fine with you again. It’s like the law of—fucking, what’s the—law of averages, you know? Every now and then, shit’s bound to work out.”

Nic was about seventy percent sure that the law of averages was some kind of logical fallacy, but he was too comfortable to get up and Google it. And anyway—he leaned forward to press a kiss to Geoff’s shoulder. Geoff hummed.

“Yeah,” said Nic quietly. “Okay, yeah.”

 


End file.
